Healthy homemade Chinese in just 30 minutes

I love strong flavors and plenty of heat. So Sichuan food, known for its spices, is one of my favorite Chinese regional cuisines. Kung Pao Chicken is one of the most well-known Sichuan dishes. It is super-popular on most American Chinese menus. But there’s no reason to wait until you go out to enjoy this dish. You can make it at home in just 30 minutes.

And when you make Chinese food yourself you can keep it healthy with less oil and soy sauce. Plus you can bump up the amount of vegetables in it. A combination of broccoli and peppers is delicious. To cut down on prep time I like to use broccoli crowns, which are the tops of the bunches, with the stalks cut off. Most supermarkets sell broccoli crowns and although crowns are more expensive than entire bunches, there is considerably less waste. Tofu makes a delicious stand-in for chicken in Kung Pao Tofu because it soaks up tons of flavor from the sauce.

Here are recipes for healthy versions of Chinese dishes that are easy to make at home:

Jessie Price is the editor-in-chief of EatingWell magazine. Besides her work on 11 other EatingWell books, she is the author of the James Beard Award-winning The Simple Art of EatingWell and EatingWell One-Pot Meals. She lives in Charlotte, Vermont where she stays busy growing her own vegetables in the summer and tracking down great Vermont food products when she’s not working.